Television

DD Freedish fixes reserve price of Rs 3.7 crore for 23rd e-auction

NEW DELHI: Less than four weeks after the last e-auction, Doordarshan will be holding the 23rd e-auction for its free-to-air DTH platform Freedish on 19 October in an attempt to touch the target of 112 television channels in the next few months.

Doordarshan has set a reserve price of Rs 3.7 crore per slot (as in the last few auctions) for the online e-auction, though Indiantelevision.com learnt that the bid amount went up to Rs 4.7 crore in earlier e-auctions.

In the 22nd auction on 22 September, it managed to auction eight slots for around Rs 31.3 crore.

DD sources refused to divulge the number of slots being auctioned to prevent bidders forming consortia to bid or resort to other malpractices.

Doordarshan DDG C K Jain told this website that Freedish will be encrypted shortly from Mpeg2 to Mpeg4 to keep a tab on the number of subscribers, but it would remain free-to-air.

The e-auction will be conducted by C1 India Pvt. Ltd., Noida.

The Rs 3 crore reserve price in the 15th e-auction was raised to Rs 3.7 crore in the 16th auction.

Currently, Freedish has 64 channels including its own channels, and Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV.